The present invention generally relates to one or more specialized electronic systems that track, analyze, and enforce commercial vehicle driver safety requirements in a commercial vehicle, which is time-shared and operated by a plurality of commercial drivers. More specifically, various embodiments of the present invention relate to one or more vehicle electronic logging authorization and handover systems associated with federal, national, state, or local commercial vehicle safety requirements and regulatory compliance.
Commercial vehicle drivers, such as truck and bus drivers, are increasingly regulated and required by state, federal, national, and/or municipal governments to take mandatory rests and stops between active driving operations. For example, in the United States, a commercial vehicle driver may be required to take a mandatory thirty-minute break after eight hours of consecutive driving or active on-duty tasks associated with the commercial vehicle (i.e. “30-minute required break per consecutive 8-hour drive”). The commercial vehicle driver may also be required to abide by other mandatory rest requirements, such as a consecutive rest period of thirty-four hours for every non-consecutive sixty hours of active on-duty driving per week (i.e. “60-hour cycle limit”), or a consecutive rest period of ten hours, including eight hours of sleep, for every non-consecutive eleven hours of active on-duty driving (i.e. “11-hour driving limit”).
In the past, the mandatory rest and/or sleep durations for commercial vehicle drivers have been conventionally recorded and tracked on paper (i.e. in form of “vehicle driver log” documents) to attempt appropriate compliance with local and/or federal regulations. In recent years, electronic driver activity-logging devices have further assisted commercial vehicle drivers to enter or verify their active driving or resting statuses in electronically-generated driver activity logs. The electronically-generated driver activity logs are typically designed to be periodically audited and reviewed by regulatory authorities and/or fleet operation managers to improve traffic safety and to provide legal compliance. In many cases, the electronically-generated driver activity logs are configured to be tamperproof or “locked” from further adjustments by relevant commercial vehicle driver(s) after a set amount of time (e.g. 12 hours, 24 hours, etc.) has elapsed from the actual time of data recording. The time elapse-triggered “locking” of the electronically-generated driver activity logs is intended to preserve the integrity of the driver activity logs for more robust regulatory compliance associated with mandatory commercial driver resting requirements.
However, conventional paper-based or electronically-generated driver activity logs do not address specialized circumstances in which a multiple number of commercial vehicle drivers share a commercial vehicle for a variety of on-duty driving operations on various time frames (e.g. hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, etc.). For example, it is difficult to generate and maintain accurate and reliable driver activity logs for a multiple number of commercial vehicle drivers who time-share a commercial vehicle, unless novel methods and systems ensure robustness and non-overlapping uniqueness of each electronically-generated driver activity log among the multiple number of commercial vehicle drivers time-sharing the same commercial vehicle.
Therefore, it may be desirable to devise a novel electronic logging authorization and handover system that seamlessly provides commercial vehicle driver log handover requests and authorizations to improve and preserve robustness and non-overlapping uniqueness of electronically-generated commercial vehicle driver log data for a plurality of commercial vehicle drivers who are time-sharing the same commercial vehicle. Furthermore, it may also be desirable to devise a novel method for operating the novel electronic logging authorization and handover system that seamlessly provides commercial vehicle driver log handover requests and authorizations to improve and preserve robustness and non-overlapping uniqueness of electronically-generated commercial vehicle driver log data.